March 2008

A couple of weeks ago I had a dream in which I smoked a cigarette but felt terrible, tremendous, overwhelming guilt after and the cig itself was roughly akin to being trapped in a burning building: scalding air, breathless, encased in smoke. Since then I’ve paid closer attention and realized that I still smoked in my dreams.

This week that changed. While having a dream about some crisis or another I dreamt that I had a nicotine lozenge – what I used for two days after I quit smoking to help land on my feet – rather than a cigarette. So, it’s official: I’ve even quit smoking in my dreams.

Actually, The Boyf had to work and Mr. Pink Eyes invited us (myself, Mr. Saturday, Pants Wilder & Anna) to go see the movie on the grounds that it was sure to be so terrible as to be enjoyable in a voyeuristic, trainwrecky way. So, we went. I mildly discomfited the woman behind the snack counter when I, speaking to Messrs. Saturday and Pink Eyes, said, “I know I’m late but, Christ, it’s not like there won’t be fifteen minutes of ads for Everyone Loves fucking Raymond in a place like this.” The place (like this) to which I referred was Southpoint Cinemas, which actually has very comfy chairs and is close to my house but in no other way is a preferred venue.

The movie? Lord. Actually, let me just go ahead and quote Bloom County so that Opus can say it for me: [it] “brought the word ‘BAD’ to new levels of badness. Bad acting. Bad effects. Bad everything. This film just oozed rottenness from every bad scene … Simply bad beyond all infinite dimensions of possible badness …

“Well maybe not that bad, but Lord, it wasn’t good.”

There is actually an extended action/chase sequence towards the end that I had to respect for its portrayal of chaos and inelegance while at the same time being obviously tightly controlled and quite elegantly choreographed. There end the collected good bits of this movie.

The bad parts, in no particular order:

What a wild coincidence that the last craft to fly over Scotland would be a Hot Topic supply plane carrying a thousand copies of The Anarchist’s Cookbook.

Cannibals? Really? Because there isn’t nearly enough meat on one guy for all those punks.

I am convinced in my heart of hearts that they thought they would get a PG-13 rating and when the R came down they just said, Ah, fuck it, let’s see what we can do. At that point it officially became a snuff film.

At some point after the script had been “written” and filming had started some creative elements behind the scenes – writers, producers maybe, I dunno – got extremely high and one of them said, “Dude, just picture it: Lord of the Rings vs. Mad freakin’ Max, man!” and no one objected because they already knew the movie would be terrible and in fact it could not be further damaged by such an idea.

It is tremendously disheartening to learn that even the postapocalyptic genre can find a spot for product placement.

About This Site

Robust McManlyPants on Average Display is a personal weblog on a variety of topics: books, movies, neopaganism, activism, politics, gaming and personal whinging. It is a haven of leftist literacy, a horn of plenty - nay, a frothy font whence flows an endless stream of random observations, amateur photography and catty commentary. This site is no less than the homosexual agenda incarnate.

My pseudonym itself is nothing more than a funny title invented during a conversation about the ridiculous names give to the main characters of videogames.

I can be reached via email using the link in any post.

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Pink Kryptonite is a queer-targeted comics blog to which I contribute under the name Klarion.